Alias Smith & Jones: The Story of Two Pretty Good Bad Men

by Sandra K. Sagala

  In a way, they are all still boys at heart. Butch is fascinated with the newly-invented bicycle, tooling around a pasture with Etta Place to the tune of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” Heyes, invited to the back room of the saloon by Deputy Harker, is entranced by the music emitted by a band organ, a gaudy, calliope-sounding music box.

  When things get too hot for them, Butch and Sundance visit a lawman they know to find out about enlisting in the Spanish war, hoping to clear their names.

  Visions of becoming officers dance in their heads. However, their crimes are too severe. The sheriff they’ve approached recognizes the futility of their doing anything but giving up. Similarly Heyes and Curry select as their mediator a reformed outlaw, now duly-elected Sheriff Lom Trevors whose town they’ve previously avoided out of respect for their old friend and his new position. This is where Heyes and Curry and Butch and Sundance part company. Our boys fare better because the governor agrees to offer amnesty, although with conditions attached.

  With new, albeit temporary, jobs as bank teller and bank guard, Heyes and Curry are still after the pardon despite setbacks. Butch and Sundance found trading in old habits for new was not so easily accomplished and after an attempt at payroll-guarding jobs in the Bolivian mountains that soured, they were back to doing what they did best, robbing banks.

  To Glen Larson’s credit, he took a small concept from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and built it into a series that was among the last TV westerns to survive for more than a single season in prime time. [7] Alias Smith and Jones, unique in its own right with its theme of two outlaws seeking amnesty, was nevertheless one of the myriad of television westerns whose plots were, of necessity, fast-paced and repetitive, restricted to action and simple comedy.

  The western craze on television had more or less begun with The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp which debuted in 1955 and initiated a wave of adult westerns on television. It was followed by the longest running western in television history — Gunsmoke. Wagon Train, at one point number one in the Nielsen ratings, debuted in 1957. The enormous scope and variety of plot and cast derived from its contingent of regular players offset by individuals on the train played by guest stars. In Alias Smith and Jones, the concept varied only slightly. Heyes and Curry traveled from town to town encountering citizens played by the guests. Rated number three behind Gunsmoke and Wagon Train was Have Gun, Will Travel. An unconventional western, its antihero was Paladin, a debonair gentleman gunfighter, a good guy who defied convention by dressing all in black.

  After a history of westerns in which the hero is always a good guy, stalwart, brave and honest, along came Bret Maverick, a creation of Roy Huggins. Breaking the rules of the already established western hero, in Maverick Huggins created a tongue-in-cheek comedy. Bret Maverick had no courage, no attributes of the typical western hero. Though tall, dark and handsome, the southern con man and his brother Bart tended to sneak out the back door if trouble appeared, more interested in money than honor. [8]

  By the end of the 1950s, more than thirty regularly scheduled westerns were part of the television fare every week. Six of the top seven programs were oat-burners. ABC executive Fred Silverman realized that westerns had what people wanted — “a leading man with whom the audience can easily identify,” possessing “an intangible quality which makes [him] real and believable, [and who was] involved in a larger than life enterprise.” [9] He was right. At their height, westerns attracted more than sixty million viewers nightly. [10] For a genre that in its infancy had been attractive mostly to children, now only thirty percent of viewers were under eighteen years of age. As westerns proliferated and grew more adult-oriented, the characters matured, indulging in adult vices of drinking, smoking, and gambling. Violence became more prevalent. Handsome actors were chosen to play the leads. The western as an art form began to attract talented directors and producers. [11] Then a new type of western began to emerge in the 1960s when the genre turned to domestic situations.

  The Gunsmoke characters evolved into a sort of family and The Rifleman offered the father-son duo of Lucas and Mark McCain beset with frontier family problems. Bonanza extended the father-son relationship to a father and three sons. If it did not feature a woman as a main character, it at least afforded the opportunity for female viewers to have their choice of beefcake in main characters of varied sizes, ages and personalities. Three years into Bonanza, NBC re-introduced the lone hero in The Virginian. Based on Owen Wister’s novel, the theme centered on the Old West that was being destroyed by progress from the east.

  Women became important characters on television when networks realized it is generally women who purchase the products advertised. The Big Valley was introduced in 1965 almost as a female Bonanza. Victoria Barkley, the elegant but gutsy matriarch of the Barkley clan, dealt with the contemporary problems of racism and civil rights as well as those of aging and prison reform.

  But by the end of the 1960s, the popularity of all westerns declined. From an all-time high of thirty series during the 1959-60 season, by 1970 that number had fallen to four. After the moon walk in 1969, Americans looked forward to the future, not back to the past. Technology sent the cowboy riding off into the sunset. Frank Price, head of Universal Television in the 1970s, believes that “westerns were at their most popular when cowboys were more real…As we got further and further away from that time, it was more of an unreality [to have] somebody riding around on a horse than going around in a space suit.” [12] Indeed, as early as 1929, western stars faced aviation heroes like Charles Lindbergh as competitors for the public’s adulation. After his transatlantic flight, Photoplay magazine declared, “Lindbergh has put the cowboy into the discard heap…the Western novel and motion picture heroes have slunk away into the brush, never to return…” [13]

  Never say never. Two decades later, the stories of western heroes became a staple of television fare. However, when the country became embroiled in the Vietnam War, violence that had been so much a part of western mythology wearied Americans already tired of the too real violence in the daily news. The clear-cut image of good guy versus bad and the trusting rural society of the television western were not reflected in real-life America. New methods of audience research determined that westerns remained popular with children and those less affluent than with the general population. However, since television relied on the income produced by advertising time, it had to appeal to the segments of the population more likely to part with their money. Familiar western heroes began riding off into the sunset.

  Despite the moribund popularity of Westerns, Alias Smith and Jones took its place among the leading programs of its genre. In many respects, it resembled its predecessors. Their recurring characters met folks in towns that dotted the Old West. Guest stars supplied new faces. Instead of the singular hero (who was never really alone, the Lone Ranger had Tonto, Wild Bill Hickok had Jingles, Gene Autry had Pat Buttram), Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry traveled together, sharing their unique talents, each acting as confidante and alter ego of the other. As partners, they reflected true frontier history when the physical or psychological hardships of being alone were eased by a companion. In the family sense, they are matched as cousins. To appeal to women, they are handsome and amiable; to men, they are free-spirited, poker-playing cowboy drifters living by their wits. Their peaceful, non-violent nature — “We never killed anyone” — and their desire to reform their outlaw ways made them excellent role models for children.

  Nevertheless, after the suicide of actor Peter Duel mid-way through the second season — and despite Roger Davis’s admirable continuation of the Heyes character — the demise of the program seemed inevitable. Fierce competition with Flip Wilson kept the ratings modest. When at last ABC grudgingly granted them a new Saturday night timeslot, All in the Family proved to be an even more formidable challenger in the ratings war. Those stunning blows, coupled with the network’s vision of a non-western season, signaled its end.

  However, life still
beat in the heart of the television western. In 1974, Little House on the Prairie, based on the stories by Laura Ingalls Wilder and created by Michael Landon of Bonanza fame, rated as NBC’s highest from 1977 to 1981. In 1989, Lonesome Dove, a miniseries based on the novel by Larry McMurtry, signaled the hoped-for revitalization of the western on television. Critics raved as it scored the biggest miniseries ratings in five television seasons. Over forty-four million viewers, no doubt including many who had never heard of the epic-length book, watched the first two-hour segment. Less than a year later, ABC introduced a new western series, The Young Riders. Though based on the historical Pony Express, the program explored contemporary society. Its shortcoming was that it was set in one location, costing the show what the Pony Express was all about — getting the mail from one point to another.

  The 1990s saw the resurgence of interest in cowboys. The Arts & Entertainment network offered The Real West hosted by Kenny Rogers. It chronicled the lives of men and women and events that shaped the frontier. CBS was one of the last networks to believe in the promise of the Old West as entertainment. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman in the late 1990s was one of the few revisionist westerns with a focus on a woman in a role traditionally that of a man. Mid-season 1998, The Magnificent Seven was introduced, based on the 1960 movie that was itself a remake of the 1954 film The Seven Samurai.

  Shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century, westerns began a tentative comeback. Peacemakers, a show integrating forensic techniques into a marshal’s murder investigations, premiered on USA scoring the network’s second highest rating. A series about 1876 life in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, aired on HBO and The Legend of Butch and Sundance is in development at NBC. Tom Selleck is adapting another of Louis L’Amour’s novels for the TNT network. A mini-series based on Little House on the Prairie is also in the works. All this increased activity on the western front is most welcome and long overdue.

  In 1967, Larry McMurtry wrote “The appeal cannot last forever…since the West definitely has been won, the cowboy must someday fade.” [14] What McMurtry failed to take into account is the human desire to go back to one’s roots, to learn one’s history. As Selleck noted, “There’s a bit of the frontier in all of us…That’s why Westerns are so much a part of the American spirit.” [15] As a country, America is relatively young. Though our boundaries have been reached, explored and, some would say, exploited, the stories of how we got to where we are and the characters who peopled those stories will forever remain popular. This tale of two pretty good bad men is no exception.

  Chapter 1

  Into the West Came Many Men

  Into the West came many men, the first of whom was screenwriter William Goldman. For years he had been fascinated by the story of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and eventually wrote a screenplay about them. The script sparked a bidding war among the studios which Twentieth Century Fox won, acquiring the screenplay for a then record-shattering sum of $400,000. When Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid opened in theaters on September 23, 1969, audiences immediately fell in love with the wise-cracking outlaws on the run. They rewarded the studio with a box office take of $96 million, [1] making the film the most successful Western ever. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was also captivated by this film and awarded it four Oscars — Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Song and Best Original Score.

  The popularity of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid caught the attention of a young television writer-producer at Universal named Glen A. Larson. Larson was a Western history buff who was also familiar with Butch and Sundance. Convinced by the success of the film that there was an audience for a lighthearted comedy western series, Larson turned to another part of Butch Cassidy’s story, one that William Goldman also found intriguing but had been unable to fit in his screenplay — amnesty.

  Around the turn of the century, Butch Cassidy decided it might be safer to either retire or head to South America. Heber Wells, governor of Utah, and E.H. Harriman, president of the Union Pacific Railroad, were eager to put Butch Cassidy out of business, so they offered him a deal — amnesty and a job as a guard on the Union Pacific. A meeting was arranged, but a storm delayed Harriman and the governor on their way to the rendezvous with Butch. Butch waited long past the appointed hour, but eventually decided he’d been betrayed and left. With the amnesty deal now off, Butch headed for South America with Sundance and Etta Place. [2]

  This historical incident was the springboard Larson needed to create a weekly television series. He believes, “Television is always very influenced by motion pictures and by the media…you generally can sell what they want to buy.” [3] With Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid setting records at the box office, it was obvious the television networks would want to buy a series that tapped into that audience. Of course, Larson couldn’t just recreate Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He instead turned to his history books and latched on to the amnesty premise, a unique concept nonetheless based on fact. “I might not have made something like that up,” Larson remembers, “because I wouldn’t have thought it was too believable that they’re going to give amnesty to a nationally known outlaw who stuck up all those trains.” Intrigued by the possibilities, he set to work molding it into a premise suitable for network television. He wanted a pair of protagonists à la Butch and Sundance, but of course, using them was out of the question. “Maybe we could have because it’s based on a true incident, so it’s really historical, but I think [there] would have been a lot of legal problems if we had,” Larson explains. Instead he took the historical Hole-In-The-Wall Gang member Kid Curry and matched him with the wholly imaginary Hannibal Heyes, a name he chose for its alliteration and because “it just sort of rolled off the tongue.” He made Heyes and Curry outlaws on a par with Butch and Sundance — personable and intelligent — then added the amnesty deal along with a twist. In his show, amnesty would be the goal, won only after they’ve proved themselves worthy of it. After all, it seemed likely to Larson that pardoning two outlaws, no matter how well-liked by the populace, would be a matter of political delicacy. With the concept fleshed out, Larson was ready to pitch the idea and, following in William Goldman’s footsteps, he became the second man to come into the West.

  Frank Price was an experienced television producer at Universal in 1970. Reassessing his career goals, he realized he wanted to move out of the trenches and up into Universal’s famous Black Tower as a television executive. Price approached Lew Wasserman, chairman of Universal Studios, and Sid Sheinberg, president of MCA, and made a proposal. While Universal was the number one program supplier to the networks, most of those shows were going to CBS and NBC. Price wanted to develop a relationship with ABC and to increase the amount of programming sold to them. Wasserman and Sheinberg agreed to his plan and Price began the transition from producer to studio executive.

  It was at this time that Glen Larson made his pitch for Alias Smith and Jones. “Glen came to me and told me the idea that he had that was clearly a hit idea,” Price recalls. “From that point on, it was a matter of ‘Well, how do we get it done?’ ” [4] Price took the idea to Jerry Isenberg, Executive in Charge of Production at ABC. Isenberg liked it and, as was the procedure at ABC, set up a concept test.

  Bringing a television series to life is a risky and expensive venture. ABC tried to mitigate the risks by asking focus groups what they thought of the various projects the network was considering buying. They would gather an audience of the right demographic mix and hand out written summaries presenting the concepts of potential series. The focus group would read the summaries, then answer questions designed to determine how well they liked each concept and how likely they would be to watch the series if it became a reality.

  A week or so after the concept test was done, Isenberg relayed the bad news. Alias Smith and Jones failed. ABC’s interest was wavering. The very low score it received from the focus group indicated that no one would be interested in watching two outlaws trying to earn an amnest
y. Price was amazed. He began his Hollywood career as a script reader and story analyst and he knew a good concept when he saw it. Unable to believe Alias Smith and Jones fared so poorly, he asked Isenberg if he could read the summary they used in the test. “I read what they had and I said, ‘This isn’t what the show is, so you’re testing something that we don’t plan to do.’ ” Price asked if he could submit a summary of his own and have the concept retested. Isenberg agreed. “So I wrote a paragraph and gave it to them. They tested it and it came back with the highest concept [score] they had tested. You just had to tell it right.” ABC gave the greenlight to proceed with the pilot. Frank Price, still with one foot in the production end of the business, would serve as the executive producer of the film, wielding creative control over the project. The third man had come into the West.

  By the early summer of 1970, ABC had given Universal the order for fourteen episodes to begin airing at mid-season. Glen Larson began writing the pilot script. Alias Smith and Jones was Larson’s first foray into the world of series creator, so a collaborator was brought in to help fine-tune the script. The collaborator was Douglas Heyes, a writer known for his deft touch with humorous Westerns, a skill developed during his stint writing and directing for Maverick. [5] While Heyes was perfectly happy to collaborate on the script, he had a policy of not putting his name on anything where he did not get sole writing credit; for Alias Smith and Jones he used the pseudonym Matthew Howard.

  Larson was pleased to be working with a man who was one of his favorite writers, as well as something of a mentor. In 1959, Douglas Heyes was one of the core group of writers working with Roy Huggins on Maverick. Larson was a musician who decided to try his hand at writing a television script. He wrote a spec script for Maverick and, hoping to sell it, submitted it to Heyes, who read it and was impressed enough to give it a table reading with James Garner, Heyes and his wife all playing parts, much to the delight of the fledgling writer. Unfortunately, there was a writers’ strike going on at the time which made it impossible for Heyes to buy Larson’s script. Larson missed out on making his first sale, but was encouraged enough by Heyes’s response to stick with writing.